The world’s most dangerous prime minister —Brian Cloughley

There is an “apocalyptic cult” controlling over 100 nuclear weapons. It is a cult commanded by Binyamin Netanyahu, a psychotic warmonger who also exercises control over US foreign policy

One of the more intriguing international headlines last week was “Growing Anger at US Killings in Afghanistan: Unborn Baby Shot in the Womb Definitely Not a Militant”; and I began to write about the foreign cowboys whose slaughter has alienated so many citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and encouraged countless young men into the welcoming explosive jackets of the barbaric Taliban.

The unborn baby story is terrible, but it didn’t get much international coverage, and none in the United States. One account was that “When the killings were reported…US forces claimed they had killed ‘four militants’ and wounded another. It was only later that they were forced to acknowledge that the house they attacked belonged to a Afghan Army officer, and that the people killed were his wife, a brother, and two of his children…the wounded woman [described] in the initial report was nine-months pregnant, and the attacking US forces shot the unborn baby in her womb. The troops now say they don’t believe the people they killed were involved in militant activities.”

How evocative, to my generation, at least, of Nazi Germany’s savagery in Poland and other occupied countries in the hideous years of Hitler’s war.

But something else came to my attention, an even graver matter. For while foreign forces in Afghanistan killed some 600 civilians last year, it is likely that many more civilians will die in another country in the near future as a result of indiscriminate attacks ordered by a very strange prime minister.

Much world attention is being given to Pakistan at the moment. Internal security — or lack of it — is alarming, and nobody can say where the next bomb will go off, except the fanatical savages who explode them. I am deeply worried, and have never been so pessimistic about Pakistan’s future.

But this is not the fault of Prime Minister Gilani, who, in spite of being a politician, is a decent man (like his Indian counterpart). As the world’s prime ministers go, he rates pretty high — although admittedly he hasn’t got much of a challenge for top of the pops.

A to Z, they’re a pretty dismal lot. From Australia’s clever but vulgar Kevin Rudd, who enjoys swearing at defenceless female air force sergeants, reducing them to tears (what a grubby little creep), to Zimbabwe’s pathetic and powerless Morgan Tsvangirai, they have as much charm and appeal as a moderately mobile amoeba. Britain’s Gordon Brown is a dreary disaster, and Thailand’s man, Mr Abhasit, was roundly humiliated last week by his inability to prevent demonstrators driving every prime minister from the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations out of his capital. Some were airlifted from the roof of their hotel. How splendid.

But there is a dangerous prime minister. He is Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose scheming resulted in his recent accession to Israel’s highest post. ‘Highest’, because the position of president is entirely ceremonial in Israel (and India); which might be a good idea in some other countries.

Netanyahu is a poisonous reptile whose delight in power is terrifying. He hates Muslims and has indicated his intention to attack Iran. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — and quickly — or an imperilled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.”

In an unconsciously ironic diatribe, Netanyahu declared “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying…”

Indeed there is an “apocalyptic cult” controlling over 100 nuclear weapons. It is a cult commanded by Binyamin Netanyahu, a psychotic warmonger who also exercises control over US foreign policy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington idolises Netanyahu and is immensely powerful. No US politician dare fall foul of it, and Mr Obama duly bent the knee when he was a candidate for the presidency. And it was AIPAC that got Congress to pass a bill condemning the Palestinians in Gaza for having their hospitals bombed and suffering the deaths of 111 children in January.

The Guardian recorded that two medical assistants in Gaza were “hit by an Israeli tank shell packed with 8,000 flechettes — dart-like nails — as they moved one of three wounded civilians into their ambulance. The patient died instantly; the paramedic died on the way to hospital.” Gallant little Israel.

And Netanyahu complained that the genocidal assault on the Palestinians did not go far enough or last long enough. So much for the Fourth Geneva Convention that stipulates that “parties to the conflict shall endeavour to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas.”

But humanitarian law appears to mean nothing to the US Congress which immediately expressed “vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel,” and so on, at length.

So what will the US do should Netanyahu attack Iran? It would be impossible for such a strike to be carried out without Washington’s approval, because Israeli aircraft would have to fly through airspace dominated by the US Air Force. The world would then realise that Washington continues “vigorous support” for the kid-killers of Gaza. And countless ordinary citizens would be killed by Israel’s US-supplied cluster bombs, as they were in Lebanon.

Will the world’s most dangerous prime minister be the beneficiary of “unwavering commitment” by the world’s most popular president?

Brian Cloughley’s book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, has just been published by Pen & Sword Books (UK) and is distributed in Pakistan by Saeed Book Bank